Food Hubs 101 - washingtongrantmakers.org

Food Hubs 101
A Learning Event & Stakeholder Convening in
Greater Washington
Meeting Proceedings
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Chevy Chase, MD
Washington Regional Convergence Partnership
A project of the
Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers
Photo: Common Market
Executive Summary
Across the country, momentum is growing for
transparent and equitable food systems that foster
healthy people and healthy environments. Organizations throughout the Greater Washington region
are developing innovative ways to get fresh, healthy
food from local, small and medium-sized farms to
a variety of consumers, including those in vulnerable or underserved communities. These farms generally do not produce enough by themselves to
supply large customers like schools, hospitals, and
in some cases, restaurants. Enter food hubs. Food
hubs specialize in aggregating products from small
and medium-sized farms and getting them into new
markets. The community members and institutions
that purchase this food have the security of knowing where their food comes from, and in many instances the food hubs that deliver it provide additional community services like nutrition education.
Food Hubs 101 was an event that gathered about
70 people interested in learning about food hubs in
various stages of development in the Greater
Washington region. During this first gathering of
its kind focused on the region, policy experts and
practitioners gave presentations and participated in
panel discussions on how food hubs operate and
how they can be leveraged to improve equity and
inclusion throughout the food system. Recommendations were provided on how funders can support
the development of these organizations. Challenges
and success stories from a cross-section of food
hubs were also shared to provide real life examples
of issues raised by presenters. Attendees reported
that they came away invigorated. Many found the
networking and data on food hubs particularly valuable. Nearly all expressed interest in a follow-up
event to cover related issues like food processing,
business planning, healthy food investment opportunities, and more. While much work lies ahead,
this convening celebrated successes thus far and
infused the community of practice with more
knowledge. Importantly, it also started a new conversation on how food hubs can improve equity
and opportunity not just for the producers they
work with, but for the communities and customers
they serve.
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Introduction
Food Hubs 101, held on October 22, 2013 at the
National 4-H Youth Conference Center in Chevy
Chase, MD brought together a cross-section of
food hubs, grantmakers, local and federal government representatives, and nonprofit organizations
from the Greater Washington region. Attendees
were united in their interest in understanding the
role that food hubs can play in building the region’s
food system. The Washington Regional Convergence Partnership (WRCP), a group of funders belonging to the Washington Regional Association of
Grantmakers (WRAG), hosted this day-long event.
As WRAG’s President, Tamara Copeland noted in
her opening remarks, the WRCP knows that there
has been tremendous growth in food hubs and that
there are also some major nonprofit organizations
that have performed food hub-like functions in the
region for years. But there is not a lot of information on food hubs’ impact and they are also by
and large, new entities to the funding community in
the Greater Washington region. Given the WRCP’s
interest in seeing more coordination in the local
food system, the group thought it would be important to hold the convening as a window into
some of the current opportunities and challenges
for building a regional supply chain in a way that
considers values around equity and inclusion.
The group’s consultant, Lindsay Smith, further noted that the growing interest in the Greater Washington region’s food system is reflective of the
broader national movement to develop more sustainable, regional food systems. She shared that the
WRCP is further committed to bringing an “equity
lens” to their work to promote the development of
a food system that is as inclusive and equitable as
possible in all stages from land to fork. Given the
persistence of inequities along lines of race, class,
and more in the Greater Washington region, and
the changing face of the region and the nation, this
lens is critical.
The day’s panels and presentations focused
primarily on the distribution phase of a more
equitable food system; exploring what trends,
success stories, and challenges are emerging in the
food hubs that make such distribution of local and
regional food possible.
Photo: Washington
Regional Association of
Grantmakers
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Food Hubs 101
Presenters: John Fisk, Wallace Center and Jim Barham, United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA)
John Fisk, Executive Director of the Wallace Center, and Jim Barham, agricultural economist at the
Agriculture and Marketing Service agency of the
USDA, provided an overview of food hubs and
their current state of practice. Barham started by
reminding the audience that buyer demand for local food continues to grow. Demand is currently
outstripping available supply and producers still
face a myriad of obstacles to accessing larger volume customers, including a lack of distribution,
marketing, and processing infrastructure. This
particularly stymies operators of mid-sized farms,
known as “ag of the middle,” which are too large
to sell directly to individual consumers but too
small to be viable by selling to larger commodity
markets. Enter: food hubs.
A regional food hub is a business or organization
that actively manages the aggregation, distribution,
and marketing of source-identified food products
primarily from local and regional farmers or producers to strengthen these producers’ ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand. The
presenters likened food hub functionality to an
hourglass: products are aggregated from many
farms and are then sold or otherwise re-distributed
to a variety of outlets. Though this sounds similar
to a conventional distribution system, food hubs
provide a number of distinguishing services to producers. They also provide a range of community
services including educational programs, buy local
campaigns, healthy food distribution to communities considered food deserts, food bank donations,
and more. Food hubs aim to be financially viable
and to have positive economic, social, and environmental impacts within their communities.
“A regional food hub is a business
or organization that actively
manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of sourceidentified food products primarily
from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to
satisfy wholesale, retail, and
institutional demand.”
-USDA Agricultural
Marketing Service
Recent national growth in the number of food
hubs is substantial. Based on a working list of 239
food hubs identified by the Wallace Center’s
National Good Food Network (NGFN), at least
120 of these have launched in the past five years.
Food hubs have developed under different legal
structures, including privately held, nonprofit, cooperative, and publicly held. Though 48% of food
hubs are self-identified as privately held businesses,
they all have a social mission for their work and
aim to support their community in some way.
Fisk also shared results from NGFN’s 2013 food
hub survey which collected data from 2012. Of the
239 food hubs located around the country, NGFN
found 21 active food hubs that serve the Greater
Washington DC region with an additional 14 hubs
in the process of emerging across DC, Virginia,
Maryland, and Delaware.
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Food Hubs
Serve a Changing
Market
“Local food sales were
estimated to be $4.8
billion in 2008, and projected to have climbed
to $7 billion in 2012,
through a combination
of grocery, retail, restaurant, farmers markets and institutional
sector sales.”
BUYER DEMAND IS STRONG FOR LOCAL FOOD
 Local food sales were estimated to be $4.8 billion in 2008, and are projected
to have climbed to $7 billion in 2012 (USDA-ERS report, 2012)
 In 2011 National Grocers Association survey, 83 percent consumers said the
presence of local food “very” or “somewhat important” in their choice of
food store (up from 79 percent in 2009)
 89 percent of fine dining restaurants surveyed by the National Restaurant
Association in 2008 reported serving locally sourced items
 Seven of the top 10 food retail chains in US now promote local sourcing (USDAERS report)
 The number of farm to school programs totaled more than 2,000 in 2011, a
five-fold increase since 2004 (National Farm to School Network estimates)
Total annual sales by hubs in this region alone are
estimated to be between $20 and $40 million. They
have a diversity of products, models, and customers. Fifty-seven percent of active hubs in the region
mostly sell directly to customers through online ordering systems, multi-farm CSAs, public markets,
storefronts, etc.; 29% of the active food hubs sell
wholesale to institutions such as schools, restaurants, hospitals, other distributors, grocery stores,
etc.; and the other 14% sell to both wholesale and
retail markets.
Nationally, the more than 100 food hubs that completed the 2013 survey reported buying from an
average of 80 producers. Food hubs themselves
were found to employ 11 staff members on average. Seventy-six percent reported that all or most of
their producers were small and mid-sized. Half of
the respondents indicated that most or all of their
producers had diversified their product offerings.
They have also extended their growing seasons,
adopted more sustainable production methods, in-
creased financial literacy, hired additional people,
and increased acreage under production. In short,
food hubs are actively providing value to small and
mid-sized producers and helping to grow their
Food Hubs in Greater
Washington in 2013
21 active hubs, 14 emerging
VA: 17 active hubs, 9 emerging
MD: 3 active hubs, 4 emerging
DC: 1 active, 1 emerging

825 farmers/producers (from the 50% of
hubs reporting), actual probably over 1000

75% privately held business, 25% nonprofit

Annual sales/hub range from $500k to over
$5 million each.
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Who do Food Hubs in Greater
Washington do Business With?
• Individuals and households
–Online ordering systems
–Multi-farm CSAs
–Public markets
–Storefronts
• Institutions
–Schools
–Restaurants
–Hospitals
–Distributors
–Grocery stores
• Wholesale and Retail Markets
operations, which in turn positively impacts the local economy.
Understanding food hub finances was a significant
portion of the national survey. The business efficiency ratio was calculated by dividing an organization’s expenses by its revenue; a ratio of less than
one indicates better performance than a ratio of
greater than one. Although there was a wide range
of results within each type of hub, nonprofit food
hubs were found to have an average business efficiency ratio of 1.2. Cooperatives had a ratio of 0.94,
and for-profits, 1.06. When asked how dependent
they were on grant funding from public and/or private sources to carry out core functions, 51% of
food hubs indicated that they were not dependent
at all. Another 32% stated that they were somewhat
dependent, meaning that 83% of existing food hubs
could run their core operations for some period of
time without external funding.
An audience question probed further the ability of
nonprofit food hubs to operate without grant sup-
Photo: Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers
port, wondering whether successful food hubs may
be bought out by bigger supply chains. Fisk and
Barham responded that rather than being acquired
by large corporate interests, food hubs may buy out
each other. For example, the Charlottesville, VAbased Relay Foods acquired the local food buying
club Arganica and its accompanying DC market.
Relay Foods now has a strong presence in the city.
Regardless of structure, top food hub operational
challenges include managing growth and balancing
supply and demand. Food hubs identify the following as specific barriers to meeting the growing demand for local food: increasing staff, securing more
product supply, and increasing storage space and
delivery capacity. Despite its popularity, the food
hub business model still contains risks. The vagaries
of weather will never disappear, nor will the food
industry’s tight profit margins. Cash flow may also
be a challenge for food hubs, especially when they
work with institutions that delay payments which
the hub may not have an ability to advance to producers. Despite these challenges, all across the
country, food hubs are expanding farm sales and
showing other positive impacts on local economies.
According to a Cornell University study, food hubs
have an economic multiplier of 1.63: for every additional $1 of demand for food hub products, an additional $0.63 is generated in related industrial sectors.
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Fisk concluded the presentation with a discussion
of the role funders can play in supporting food
hubs. He noted that it is important for those who
are considering investing to look at what feasibility
studies, business plans, and business background a
potential food hub can demonstrate. Funders
should also consider the food hub’s capacity to
grow and its impact on the local economy.
More information from the survey referenced in
this session is at: www.wallacecenter.org/
foodhubcollaboration/
The full presentation for this session is
available in the Appendix.
Photo: Wallace Center
What Funders Can do to Support
Food Hubs
• Help hubs access infrastructure to meet
their aggregation and distribution goals
• Cultivate development of peer-to-peer
learning networks
• Support hubs’ access to technical
assistance
• Offer loan guarantees to enable credit
access
• Support access to food products in lowincome communities
Photo: Local Food Hub
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Panel Presentation: Additional Ways Food Hubs Seek to Improve
Equity in the Food System
Moderator: Lorette Picciano, Rural Coalition
Panelists: Haile Johnston, Common Market; Kristin Suokko, Local Food Hub; Lindsay Palmer, DC
Central Kitchen
This panel explored themes of equity and inclusion
as they relate to food hubs through three case studies: Common Market (Philadelphia, PA), The Local
Food Hub (Charlottesville, VA), and DC Central
Kitchen (Washington, DC). As discussed in the
day’s first presentation, food hubs are committed to
providing community services in addition to standard aggregation and distribution services and improving equity for farmers. The purpose of this panel was to explore ways that food hubs can be further
leveraged to improve the health of the communities
they serve.
Moderator Lorette Picciano kicked off the panel by
sharing some of the Rural Coalition’s experiences in
working with socially disadvantaged producers
across the country. Picciano stated that it is important to measure and evaluate how communities
of color and other minorities are, or could be, involved in food hubs in the future. When examining
who lacks access to food or markets, oftentimes
members of these or similar communities could be
supported to provide culturally appropriate food to
these hubs. She also urged the audience to look at
the diversity amongst food hub managers themselves in order to evaluate true equity within the local food system.
Haile Johnston, a co-Executive Director of Common Market in Philadelphia, explained that the inspiration for his food hub came about from urban
agriculture programming in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, a largely low-income,
African American community. After Johnston and
his wife realized that the nature of this work could
take a generation to effect behavior change, they
“We need to measure and evaluate
how communities of color and other
minorities are, or could be, involved
in food hubs in the future. When we
look at who lacks access to food, oftentimes we see that members of communities of the same demographic groups
could be supported to provide culturally appropriate food to these hubs. It
is also important to take stock of who
is engaged in running food hubs.”
- Lorette Picciano, Rural Coalition
started Common Market as a shorter term solution
to improving food and health. Common Market is a
nonprofit local food distributor that works to ensure all people in the region have access to good
food while paying their producers and employees a
fair wage.
Photo: Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers
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They focus on wholesale and institutional food service channels; moving the majority of their products into hospitals, schools, and supermarkets.
(This includes supermarkets that receive fresh food
financing to reduce the prevalence of food deserts.)
Common Market considers community and local
investment to be the primary driver of their work,
which is why their theory of change focuses on ensuring all income levels have equal access to the
local, healthy food market. Ultimately, Common
Market keeps money in the local economy which
supports regional farms and employs local people.
They also focus on environmental stewardship and
food safety. Agriculture is historically one of the
more polluting environmental industries, but in
their minds, it is possible for this paradigm to
change too. Finally, they understand that if initiatives like Common Market are to be scaled and replicated, they need to provide safe and trusted products to be competitive with conventional agriculture, processing, and distribution.
The Local Food Hub (LFH) in Charlottesville, VA
is another example of a young food hub that has
had significant success since launching in July 2009
with the help of many community members. According to Executive Director, Kristin Suokko,
LHF garnered broad support from the outset due
to their goals for community building and inclusiveness. LFH envisions changing the food system
so that local food is the norm, not the exception,
for all community members. Everyone should always have the ability to choose local first, and from
producers who are able to make a living. LFH has
built relationships with their 80 plus partner producers by demonstrating that they will pay them a
fair market price and on time. The vast majority of
their partner producers are quite small, and in fact,
many would be under the poverty level if they relied solely on their farm income. Over time these
small growers have been able to increase their sales
and their business, especially since LFH provides
them with a whole suite of services, including food
safety training, financial planning, packing workshops, and more. LFH has also partnered with the
International Refugee Committee (IRC) on a farm
worker training program. The program provides
refugees with training and job placement on-site at
LFH’s 70-acre certified organic educational farm.
Many producers in central Virginia have identified
growing the workforce of skilled farm laborers as a
need.
Similar to Common Market, LFH works with institutions to get local food to community members.
LHF has tripled the number of schools they work
with since their launch, many of them rural with
high numbers of low income students. LFH also
donates food to organizations supporting underserved members of the Charlottesville community.
Suoko argued that food access is the best lens
through which to look at the food system and understand a whole host of social and economic issues that follow. Every benefit – for farmers, for
the environment, for public health – that comes
from a robust local food system is more fully realized when it penetrates the entire community.
Photo: DC Central Kitchen
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The final panel presenter was Lindsay Palmer, the
Director of Nutrition and Community Outreach
for DC Central Kitchen (DCCK). Palmer introduced DCCK’s sweeping mission to the audience:
to use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.
DCCK does this through a variety of programs,
including job training, food recycling, and social
enterprise. They are a well-established nonprofit
that understands the needs of different communities in DC, including the deep disparities between
the most affluent and most impoverished city
wards. With a good transportation system in place,
food processing and storage capacity, and existing
procurement partnerships, DCCK has worked with
the city government on a Healthy Corner Stores
program to improve healthy food access within urban food deserts. Consumers and participating
Healthy Corner Store owners have attested positively to the difference that the program is making
for them. This program also employs graduates
from DCCK’s culinary arts program, an initiative
to address one of the root causes of food
Throughout the entire
District of Columbia, one
out of eight households is
considered food insecure.
The disparities are much
starker when comparing
specific Wards. The Healthy
Corner Stores program is
one way that the city is
seeking to address unequal
access to healthy food.
insecurity: poverty.
DCCK purchases local food for some of their programs to not only support regional farmers, but
also because they are able to procure
“seconds” (blemished or otherwise unaesthetically
pleasing fruits and vegetables that high-end retailers
won’t purchase) at a cheaper rate, stretching their
purchasing dollars. This provides farmers with income from food that they may have otherwise had
to dispose of.
When an audience member asked Palmer whether
local food was going to remain an interest for
DCCK for the foreseeable future, she responded
that they turned to this because their supplier was
charging quite a bit for (non-local) food. They
found competitive pricing in local food, and particularly in local seconds. LHF’s Suokko added that
from her perspective, the economic and public
health benefits may take some time to come to fruition, but if food hubs and other organizations can
document these benefits and demonstrate how
they are contributing to positive change, the local
food movement will be here to stay. Johnston
The Problem
• Ward 3
Median Income: $128K
Obesity Rate: 48%
Type 2 Diabetes: 8%
African American: 6%
SNAP Recipients: 528
Number of Grocery
Stores: 11
– 1 grocery store per
7300 residents
–
–
–
–
–
–
• Ward 8
Median Income: $29K
Obesity Rate: 72%
Type 2 Diabetes: 18%
African American: 92%
SNAP Recipients: 43,000
Number of Grocery
Stores: 3
– 1 grocery store per
23,000 residents
–
–
–
–
–
–
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agreed. Their original urban agriculture programs
are still thriving and Common Market has grown to
where they are successfully covering their operating
costs with proceeds from their local food sales.
Another audience question pertained to the perceived trendiness of health and sustainability
amongst funding communities, and how these issues may be more successfully connected to community building in order to ensure lasting support.
Palmer noted that improving food access is going
to be a long term project but that DCCK is exploring partnership opportunities to gather quantifiable
data which they hope will reflect a community’s
changing health profile as a result of increased
healthy food access. Johnston responded that
Common Market is actively figuring out how to
democratize good food, or to make good food
available to all members of a community. This includes seeking community partners to help them
creatively address this issue. Faith communities,
with their facilities and strong leadership, are
emerging as places where Common Market believes they can help facilitate some of the biggest
cultural shifts around food.
Before the panel came to a close, Picciano talked
about the Rural Coalition’s work to build relationships with minority and disadvantaged farmers to
ensure inclusion within policy efforts like the Farm
Bill. She likened their work to sometimes feeling as
though you have a toolbox, but are only permitted
to use one tool at a time. To be the most successful, you need opportunities to use all of the tools in
tandem: community food security, healthy food
financing, outreach programs for financially disadvantaged farmers, and more. The stakeholders in
the sustainable food movement can use the local
political process to their advantage by getting directly involved. Picciano shared an example of
three farmworkers in Florida recently running for
county council; two were elected.
In their closing remarks, each panelist emphasized
that their work was about building relationships
and partnerships. This makes the work both challenging and gratifying, and hopefully of interest to
funders. They noted that there’s a tremendous
amount of creativity happening within the foundation world right now, transcending traditional hunger relief initiatives to consider social enterprise
opportunities as well. Food hubs need a diversity
of financial tools to enable them to survive and
thrive, and foundations can play a key role in facilitating this.
Photo: DC Central Kitchen
Presentations for this session are available in
the Appendix.
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Interactive Panel Discussion: Observations from the field on the potential for regional growth and cross-sector collaboration
Moderator: Philip Gottwals, Friends & Farms
Panelists: Amanda Behrens, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future; Louise Mitchell, MD Hospitals for a Healthy Environment; Jody Tick, Capital Area Food Bank; Matt Mulder, Arcadia Center
for Sustainable Food and Agriculture; Tom McDougall, Blue Ridge Produce
The day’s final panel provided an opportunity to
hear more about some of the innovative, cross sector work taking place in Greater Washington to
build a sustainable regional food system. Moderator
Philip Gottwals, an agricultural economist by training and food hub co-founder, introduced the panel
by explaining that the goal of food hubs is to bring
an element of transparency back into the food system. The food and agricultural sector is difficult:
profit margins have never been thinner, and therefore private funder interest in this shifting paradigm is very important. He expressed hope that we
will begin to see more investment in the new system, and that existing programs will work together
more effectively so that funding can go farther.
Amanda Behrens, manager of the Maryland Food
System Map at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), discussed data of interest to
food hubs and their supporters. Initially the focus
of the food system map was only on Baltimore
food deserts. Instead of just encouraging grocery
stores to enter these areas, CLF found a broader
desire to include local food solutions in the effort
to improve food access. As a result, the project expanded beyond the city. Maryland is an agricultural
producer, but grain and poultry predominate. Many
of the smaller farms growing food for human consumption are already at selling capacity via farmers
markets and Community Supported Agriculture
programs. The Maryland Food System Map identified a need for farms in the state to produce more
food to fill this gap.
Louise Mitchell discussed encouraging healthy, sustainable food procurement in health care settings as
part of MD Hospitals for a Healthy Environment
to benefit both patients and their surrounding
communities. Many hospitals contract with food
service corporations, whose existing infrastructure
makes it difficult to purchase from local sources,
and also to identify and publicize the local food
that does make its way into these institutions. Hospitals have some financial incentives in place to buy
from large purchasing organizations; however,
some hospitals forego those incentives and instead
purchase from food hubs or directly from local
farmers.
Jody Tick described Capital Area Food Bank’s
(CAFB) work as hub-like, given the distribution
and aggregation nature of their operation. In the
long-term they want to transition from emergency
food assistance to community food assistance. Today they operate out of two facilities in DC and
Northern Virginia and distribute millions of
pounds of food annually, some of it sourced from
the region. CAFB is a trusted source for food.
They complement distribution services to hundreds
of partner agencies with nutrition education for
clients at risk of hunger across the metro area.
CAFB is launching the Food and Vegetable Fund
for Greater Washington, a program that will enable
CAFB to source more fresh produce locally. Tick
shared that fresh foods require a greater degree of
logistical support than the canned or dry goods that
may be more common in a food bank setting.
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Matt Mulder from the non-profit Arcadia Center
for Sustainable Food and Agriculture explained that
his organization is addressing food systems work in
an entrepreneurial way. The nonprofit aims to build
a more equitable and sustainable food system by
engaging every element of the system, from producers all the way to the consumers. Arcadia has a
demonstration farm at the nearby Woodlawn Plantation in Alexandria, VA. Their farm and nutrition
education programming includes field trips, workshops, and demonstrations. Arcadia also provides
healthy food access through its mobile market program. Their retrofitted school bus procures food
from local farms and sells it at nine sites throughout
Greater Washington that have been identified for
their lack of grocery stores and farmers markets.
The mobile market hosts a double bucks program
that is changing purchasing habits amongst the low
income consumers the market serves. For example,
rather than spending just $20 if they have $10 and a
$10 double bucks match, customers are spending
approximately $24 on local food.
The last panelist was Tom McDougall of Blue
Ridge Produce. Their tag line is “we let farmers be
farmers.” The current food system makes it difficult
to buy local at scale, but organizations like Blue
Ridge Produce are changing that paradigm and are
working on logistics on the farmers’ behalf. According to McDougall, in Virginia, $16.8 billion of food
is purchased each year, and seven to eight percent
of that is local food. Blue Ridge Produce is aiming
to increase the market share by 1%. They’re doing
this as a for-profit business pursuing b corp certification as one demonstration of their commitment
to community. Blue Ridge Produce is also exploring
corporate CSA models, veteran farm training programs, and more in order to capture that additional
market share. One hundred percent of their partner
producers returned to work with them for year two,
and twenty-two percent of those original producers
have grown their own operations. McDougall believes there is still a big gap between supply and demand, and an enormous untapped market for local
food.
Photo: Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture
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Closing Thoughts
Philip Gottwals; Lorette Picciano; Arthur Neale, USDA; Jim Barham; John Fisk; Kristin Pauly,
Prince Charitable Trusts
The day’s moderators and morning presenters concluded the event with some summary observations.
Philip Gottwals reminded the audience that it is
time to think about systemic changes. And while
metrics are supremely important, the local food
movement must be driven by a different set of
metrics that aren’t just cost and financially based.
In the same vein, Lorette Picciano invited the audience to think about the cost of inequity, citing the
social and economic costs of decades-long farmer
discrimination cases. She urged metrics that would
capture more fully who is participating in building
regional food systems and observed that local food
and equity groups are not necessarily supporting
each other to their full potential. Instead of an
“either/or” approach, this movement needs a
“both/and” approach.
Arthur Neale signaled his strong support of food
hubs on behalf of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing
Services. They are keen to see more markets become available for farmers within the growing local
food movement. Their role is to provide support
through research and data collection. In a young
movement like this one, there’s not enough data
available at this time for lawmakers to make assessments and create policy. This will be an ongoing
effort.
John Fisk of the Wallace Center urged the audience
to think of the sustainable food movement as a culmination of longstanding interests, including environment, health, and farm viability. The globalization, consolidation, and lack of transparency in thefood system is relatively recent, having emerged
with cheap oil. This will ultimately be the short-
“Federal and state agencies are good at
funding hard infrastructure, but not the
intangible work like relationship building and network creation that really
drives the success of this movement.
This is where foundations play a role.”
-Jim Barham,
USDA agricultural economist
lived. The work of people gathered for this convening and beyond to refocus the food system on
health for people, the environment and for communities is already undoing this 70 year “blip.” As
stakeholders dismantle that movement, they will
have to do so in an equitable fashion, ensuring that
jobs are held and controlled equitably, and that infrastructure is built and controlled in the same
fashion. The Wallace Center just completed a multi-year project that made 30 grants to organizations
increasing healthy urban food access with equity
and inclusiveness at the forefront of this.
Kristin Pauly of the Prince Charitable Trusts closed
the session by adding that today’s convening
demonstrated the extraordinary potential for multiple benefits to result from local and regional food
systems work. Funders have the important job of
making money and resources available to people in
the field effecting change, and in the case of the
sustainable food movement, there are opportunities
for funders to collaborate and coordinate as a unified force in doing so.
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Conclusion
If the engaged audience and dynamic panelists,
enthusiastic networking, and positive feedback
after the event are indicators, Food Hubs 101 was
an unmistakable success. Attendees overwhelmingly expressed interest in convening again, citing
“valuable connections,” the “notion of approaching the topic as business driven by economics,”
and the “diverse assortment of organizations”
represented as event highlights.
Attendees also had positive remarks on how considerations of equity were incorporated into the
day. One remarked that the topic was “very well
covered; the best I've heard to date” while another
said “I am interested in incorporating the homeless and physically disabled;” raising the point that
equity was focused primarily on race and socioeconomic factors at the event.
focus a future conversation on building food system infrastructure and the local economy from an
equity-centered perspective. Johnston remarked
that plenty of investors have approached Common Market with financing offers; however, there
is tremendous work to be done in getting organizations and their staff to the point where they are
“socially investable.”
The event attendees are to be commended for the
significant strides their organizations have already
made in cultivating a healthy food system for the
Greater Washington region. An interdisciplinary
approach will continue to be needed as nonprofits, businesses, foundations, and government alike
all work towards their vision of a transparent, equitable, and sustainable food from farm to fork.
Several questions came up during a brief brainstorming session that could be addressed at a
future gathering, including:

How can governments (local, state) remove
barriers to better facilitate food hub launches?

What technical assistance can community development financial institutions (CDFI) provide to owners and operators of food hubs?

What challenges have food hubs overcome to
get food directly into schools?

How can nonprofit food hubs make money in
order to subsidize their other operations?

What additional metrics are needed to measure
food hub successes?

How do existing and emerging food hubs address food safety?
Finally, Haile Johnston from Common Market
offered another observation that could be used to
Photo: Local Food Hub
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Acknowledgements
The Washington Regional Convergence Partnership wishes to thank all of the presenters and attendees that participated in Food Hubs 101.
In addition, it wishes to appreciate Kendall
Singleton and John Fisk at the Wallace Center at
Winrock International for their authorship of the
proceedings. Lindsay Smith, consultant to the
Washington Regional Convergence Partnership,
and Rebekah Seder and Andrea Weiters at the
Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers,
also contributed to this document.
The Washington Regional Convergence Partnership would further like to thank the Convergence
Partnership for funding which supported Food
Hubs 101 and the development of this document.
Photo credits from the cover page go to Common
Market and the Local Food Hub.
About the Washington Regional
Convergence Partnership
T
he Washington Regional Convergence
Partnership (WRCP) was formally established in 2011 through a planning grant
from the Convergence Partnership. The group is a
collective of local funders who have made investments in our food system for many years and belong
to the Washington Regional Association of
Grantmakers. They envision an equitable regional
food system that ensures food security and decreased chronic disease, access to affordable and
nutritious food for all, aligned investments
among the philanthropic community that promote equity in the food system, and increased
investment in the local and sustainable food
economy.
For More Information:
Washington Regional Convergence Partnership
Lindsay Smith, consultant
1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 740
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-939-3440
Fax: 202-939-3442
E-mail : [email protected]
Washington Regional Convergence Partnership
A project of the
Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers
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